


I'm Coming (Sweet Home)

by What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion



Category: Dragons I guess?
Genre: BLARGH, Dragons are amazing, Gen, Mother dragons specifically are the bomb, Short work, Stand Alone, dragons use their hoards for a reason, i have a lot of feelings about dragons, i swear its not actually crap, implied character death but its really ok, just go with it, makes me go 'hweeeeh' inside, not connected to a series or any other works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion/pseuds/What_Is_A_Mild_Opinion
Summary: Irenel was old. Older than all else that walked the earth. And she was tired. I think, she thought, eyelids drooping, that I am ready to sleep now.---A very old dragon reflects on her life in the moments before her final sleep.(I swear this is not as crappy as it sounds.)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	I'm Coming (Sweet Home)

Irenel slowly walked back into the deep recess in the mountain’s side, the gaping entrance to the cave swallowing her up. A cavernous mouth with spears of rock for teeth, the cave’s opening was incredibly foreboding, but it had never been frightening to Irenel. She had always been the most terrifying thing inside. Even now, when her fire lay dying in her chest, and she could do little more than pull herself back and forth from the entrance, nothing in the cave could harm her. And even if anything could, it wouldn’t matter. She was already dying. 

She continued to pad deeper into the cave system, slowly and carefully weaving back and forth between the stalagmites twining toward the ceiling, like plants reaching for the sun. Her blunted claws clicked against the worn stone as she followed the ages-old path through to the back of the cavern, oh-so-very aware that this would be her last trip. She would be joining the stars soon.

Knowing that it would be the last time she watched the blood-eye-sun fall back below the edge of the world, and the silver-coin-moon rise up like its ghostly scepter with its entourage of stars, she had lingered on the rocky overhang. There she had watched the night paint countless skies blue and speckled, and the day paint countless more in shades of softest pink and gold. She had watched the fiery sun trace its descent more times than anyone could remember, and though she did not usually linger over such things, she found it strangely poetic that she should watch her last there as well. 

Perhaps it was the phantom that drew ever nearer to steal her lungs’ final breath that did it, but as of late she had found her mind all too full of the things that she, ever focused on the present, had for most of her life considered inconsequential. The beat of the nightingale’s tiny wings; the flashing of the celestial bodies that hung overhead, painted across the waves; the bite in the air just after the frost, the cold that you could taste in your chest. Everything in the world that laid claim to a different kind of beauty. A softer kind. A quiet kind. The little things. They hung, suspended in her mind, spinning like jewels on a mobile, and just as entrancing. But she had no time for them now. Now, she had to say goodbye. 

Once, she would have pranced down this trail, happy and proud, young and careless. She was older now. Much older. And far wiser. She had seen and done things many could only dream of, if only because so few on this planet could ever hope to match her, and the magic buried deep inside her bones. Once, Irenel would have pranced down this trail. Now her footsteps fell heavy on the rock, and her tail scraped along after her. Her brilliant white, knife-sharp fangs and claws had rounded with use, and stained with age. Four of her six horns were missing their ends, one sheared almost completely down to her skull in a brawl with the nearby village. Her gem-fire-flash scales had faded, and her wings, once held high above her, drooped with exhaustion. She could not have asked for a better life. 

Emotions swelled up inside her like a tidal wave as she reached the first nest, or what remained of it. 

For centuries, dragons and humans had fought bitterly over treasure. In reality, their eternal obsession with gold and gems had puzzled Irenel for as long as she had known about it. Even after her nestmate had tried to explain it to her, she had been perplexed. They fought so fiercely for tiny objects that they just thought… looked pretty? For the most part, they just hoarded it, or strung it on strings and wore it around as gaudy ornamentation. Irenel had no clue what function it served, if any. The treasure didn’t seem to _do_ anything for them, at least, not anything that Irenel was aware of. But maybe it did something necessary for them, something that dragons didn’t know about. After all, that was why dragons fought so fiercely to regain it. They needed it. 

Most two-legs-two-eyes, or humans, as they called themselves, fought dragons until their last breath for the metals. Irenel had been luckier than most. She still remembered him. The two-legs-two-eyes who found out why she so desperately needed it. She still remembered him as clearly as if he had just left, though it had been centuries since anything but his bones remained on the earth. His name had been unpronounceable to her, though he had said it many times in his attempt to teach her. She had settled with just calling him Blue. He had found out, watching her for weeks with his sharp, little eyes the color of the deep sea. Then he had brought others to see what he had seen. She could not repay him for that. Once they _knew_ , once they had _seen_ , the humans had never stolen from her again. But sometimes, the bravest among them (children, usually), would hike up to her cave. Just to sit. To watch. And she let them do so, because she knew that as long as they watched, her treasure would be hers. There would be no thiefs. Blue had taught them better. 

Humans, for the most part, thought that dragons just stole the metals because they wanted it, which was really quite ridiculous if you asked Irenel. Why would dragons even need breakable shiny things when their scales already shone brighter than the most flawless of gems? No, they needed it for a different reason. The minerals in the precious gems and metals, so hard to come by, were the last thing necessary to hatch a dragon egg. They would heat it to a steaming sludge with the fire in their chests, and partially submerge their clutches. The minerals helped strengthen the shell, and seeped through to the dragonet kit inside, starting the stage of development that they themselves couldn’t.

She stooped as she reached the first nest, dipping her massive head to brush her snout against the remains. And though her eyes lay upon an empty nest, melted gold and silver swirls with the cracked, blackened ruins of once mighty gems, all Irenel could see were her hatchlings. 

Maran, Livesti, Javiea, and Karena. Karena with his huge white wings, far too big for his tiny body. He never could figure out how to fold them right, she thought affectionately. Livesti with his sharp eyes and sharper wit, riddles of his own dripping from his tongue like water from an overburdened raincloud; they had joked that he should have been a sphinx, but there was a mixup. Javiea with his toothy grin, and goofy laugh, and a dangerous brilliance hidden behind a silly facade. Maran with her earthshaking roar, louder and bolder and braver than her brothers from the moment she shoved her snout through her shell. A massive smile spread across Irenel’s face as she remembered her rambunctious, ridiculous kits. She might have sat there forever, reminiscing over her last hatching. But there were more to remember. She moved on.

She traced her talons over the second nest, larger than its prior. There had been seven eggs in this lay. A weight, cold and heavy and horribly familiar, settled on her shoulders. A weight that had sat on her shoulders for years after the hatching, as she wondered what had gone so wrong. Seven eggs, she lamented, and only three had hatched. But oh, what a three they had been! Nessq with her spurts of flame, twice as long as Irenel’s from the time she was four Turns; Urele with their long leaf shaped wings and bark-like scales, who would hide in the trees for hours and never come down; Peremae with her sunset scales, and neck covered in gills, who would bury herself at the bottom of pools and refuse to resurface when she was feeling stubborn and spiteful. 

By the time she reached the third nest, Irenel was crying. She continued on, past dozens of nests, cracked gems and metals melted into uselessness, lying in pools. Nothing left of her kits but the hollows where their eggs had lain, and the memories spinning through her mind. As she looked around the cavernous space in the earth, the echoing halls of shadows and darkness, that would have sent brave soldiers screaming back into the light, she saw only her children, her beautiful children. Her legacy. Here the stalactite Yhwin had broken on his first flight. There the pool where Twohl and Emlony had wrestled from the day they hatched to the day they left. The ledge where Ramonth had egged on Hwel and Fergion’s fights. The boulder from which Qhuara had always scolded them and told them to stop. 

She would miss them, oh how she would miss them. Some she had not seen in decades. She would never see them again. Not until they joined her. 

Moons, would she miss them. But Irenel could feel it. Age had crept into her joints, and slid into her limbs, and Death was coming for her. She had outlived her mother, her father, her oh-so-many mates; her nestmates all. She was so old. And she was so tired. And she knew that her time was up.

She passed the last of her nests, and dragged herself up, curling into her hollow. One last time. Warmth settled into her chest as she wrapped her tail around herself, and her wings around her body, placing her snout on the edge of the hollow she had carved for one last look at the cave she had called home for more than ten centuries. Dozens of empty nests littered the floor of the cave, testaments to her hundreds of offspring. They would feel it, when she passed, just as Irenel herself had felt the moment her mother’s soul left for the stars. That was what dragons became, you know. When they died. Stars. Their bodies stayed, hollow shells of what they once were, and their souls turned to moonlight and stardust, and they flew up to the sky to join their families gone before. A sparkling tapestry of everything the dragons once were. She pulled her snout in for the last time, burying it under the tip of her tail. What would it be like, to become a star, she wondered? Well, she thought with faint amusement. I suppose I’m about to find out. 

She thought of her children, her beautiful, wonderful, children. She felt her chest ache with love, so full that it seemed it might shatter at any second, and send shards of overflowing love everywhere. She thought back over her life. She had watched empires rise and fall. (She had even helped topple a few.) She had raised more kits than she could count; had watched the blood-eye-sun rise and fall; had felt the wind under her wings, heard the crash and roar of waves on cliffs, had stretched her snout out and felt the warmth of the sunrise spread across her like an indescribable safety.

Irenel could say, with full honesty, what few could. She had _lived_ . Irenel was old. Older than all else that walked the earth. And she was tired. _I think,_ she thought, eyelids drooping, _that I am ready to sleep now._

She had left her legacy, her loves, her children in her stead. She was ready to rest. She thought of her nestmates, her family, gone before. She thought of her children, with so long to go. _All my love,_ she whispered in her mind, praying they could hear. 

She thought of an old dragon song, sung in a haunting key.

_‘Away, away, my life, my love,_

_It is time for me to go._

_My limbs are tired, and my breaths are spent,_

_And my eyelids, they hang low._

_I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,_

_Sweet home,_

_To the spirits of my kin;_

_My soul is succumbing,_

_And soon I am coming,_

_To the place where our spirits all roam._

_Away, away, my life, my love,_

_It is time for me to go,_

_But for me shed no tears, look up in the night,_

_And find me in the stars’ glow.’_

Peace rushed over her in a way like never before, and never again.

 _I’m coming,_ her soul sang to the tapestry of stars overhead. _I’m coming home!_

And for a moment, she swore she could hear the stars singing with her.

_I’m coming._

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a three A.M thought: 'What if dragons hoarded gems and gold because they need it to hatch their eggs? And the ones that don't have hoards lay in ore veins?' And then it kind of evolved from there. Even if this isn't the best written short story ever, I am proud of how it turned out in the end. Beta-d by the ever-wonderful Actual_Sleeping_Beauty. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
